


Keeper of Written Record

by silvercolour



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Asexual Character, Emotional Hurt, Intermittent amnesia, Jmarts but sad, M/M, Temporary title for this was “your Martin is in the other castle”, True Love, post MAG 195, they’re kept apart but they’re still very much in love, web
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:21:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29542998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvercolour/pseuds/silvercolour
Summary: POST MAG195Hilltop Road may be messing with Jon’s memory the longer he stays there, but there are certain things he cannot ever forget. Such as Martin, and the promise he made him.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 14
Kudos: 52





	Keeper of Written Record

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly: Any lines you recognise were written by Jonny, not by me. Blame him.  
> Secondly: I am sorry

It’s a struggle for Jon to remember anything in Hilltop Road on the best of days. He has been here for… a while. He thinks. There are good days when he does remember, but the good days are also the ones that hurt the most.

Today is a good day; today Jon remembers.

/

It all began when Jon and Basira arrived in Oxford at Hilltop road.

The tape – _his_ tape, A Guest for Mr Spider– was running. Jon thought distantly that he should perhaps appreciate that irony as he reached for the doorbell of the house on Hilltop Road. Clearly someone was trying to be ironic.

Beside him Basira eyed the tape with suspicion. Jon understood why– at least, he thought he remembered that much. At the time, it was taking all of his concentration to remain focused, to keep his attention on the matter at hand. The tape certainly did not help. He never enjoyed the sound of his own voice, and this story? Well. He would have been a fool to enjoy this.

Behind the door footsteps approached, echoing across the hallway. Jon heard a latch being undone, and as the door creaked open he could not help but hope, or fear, seeing who was behind it. He half expected webs, and spiders legs, and all the less-than-subtle parts that make up the Web. But those footsteps resounded inside his chest with hope. Something human surely had to be approaching. Someone he prayed would be Martin.

When the door swung open he saw Annabelle, and anger and concern for Martin struggled inside him for his flighty attention. “Archivist! Come in, you are expected,” Annabel looked at Basira, something like surprise flitting across her face, gone again in the blink of an eye. “We were not expecting you, but you are of course welcome to be our guest all the same.”

“Jon?” Basira looked at him, a question written on her face, and he did not need to be able to See her mind to understand that one.

“I ah…,” For a moment Jon’s focus drifted as the tape recorder behind him said with his own voice:

_‘MR. SPIDER WANTS ANOTHER GUEST FOR DINNER’ it reads, ‘IT IS POLITE TO-_

Dragging his attention back away from that awful day long in the past, Jon said only: “Let’s go.”

/

He remembers it. But remembering does not make him happy. Nor does it make what happened any easier to live with.

Annabel avoids him on days like these. At least, Jon thinks she does. It is hard to recall the difference between days when his memory decides to cooperate and the days he spends in a dizzying fog, walking the halls of Hilltop Road and the garden out back. He sits in the sun sometimes, on the bad days. He reads. He may have been reading the same book for some time, but at least its story continues to surprise him.

On days when he remembers he does not read the book. It’s hard to focus on anything, despite feeling clearer of mind. It’s different on those sorts of days. The forgetful, trance-like feeling lifts, only to be replaced by a blanket woven from too many feelings left unexamined. It threatens to drown him, or choke him. 

On these ‘good’ days, Jon reads Martin’s letter.

/

They sat in a too-empty parlour, side-by-side on the single couch, watching Annabel prepare tea. Basira watched her like a hawk, concerned that she might put something in their tea. Jon wasn’t worried about it– that would have been far too unsubtle. Instead he watched Annabelle with impatience, unconcerned with her actions, and only with her lack of answers.

Annabelle had not so much refused to answer any questions, as simply not given any reply whatsoever while she led them inside. Despite an overabundance of cobwebs, Jon has to admit this is the cleanest he has seen Hilltop Road. Unsurprising, as Annabel seemed to have been expecting them.

Setting down their tea on the table, Annabelle sat down on the only other seat in the big parlour, the chaise longue across from them: “Shall I go for the infamous ‘you must be wondering why I gathered you here’ kind of line?“ She seemed very pleased with herself, Jon thought, as he tried not to look at the tiny spider weaving its web between the chair and Annabelle’s shoulder.

“We’re hardly wondering _why_ ,” said Basira. “We’re here for Martin. Where is he?” Jon found himself grateful for Basira speaking first. Her impatience, or her practicality perhaps, helped guide his attention back to the present, to the reason he came here.

“Indeed! You are here _because of Martin_. But he isn’t here,” Annabel sipped her tea as if to prove a point, although Jon wasn’t sure what point she might be trying to prove. Then she rose, sweeping the little spider off her shoulder without ever looking at it: “You’re allowed to search the house, of course. As many times as you like,“ a pointed look at Jon. “What with the state he is in you may want to be quick about it, however.”

Basira rose in challenge, and stalked to the hallway. She paused in the doorway, and motioned to Jon: “C’mon then, let’s find your boyfriend, shall we? She’s gotta be hiding him somewhere in this bloody house.”

Jon stood from the couch, slower than Basira, fighting a short wave of dizziness that threatened to sit him down again. When his eyes focused, Annabelle was standing in front of him, extending a hand. In it was a letter.

“Your boyfriend asked me to give you this, Archivist.”

/

He’s not even sure why he keeps re-reading this letter. Or… No, that’s not quite true. The least he can do is be honest with himself now. Jon knows why he keeps this letter, reads it over and over and over again, knowing what it says, dreading what it will tell him, even when he already knows.

They had searched the house of course, Jon is certain of that. At least twice, that he remembers, which means there may have been more searching even than that. As Annabel had said, as he had feared, Martin was not here. He never had been.

Basira didn’t stick around for long after that. Or at least, Jon thinks she didn’t? He knows she left, has gone to find… _something_. But time, and the lack of its passing, make it very hard to tell how long ago she left.

On days when he does remember, he feels a guilty kind of gratitude for the fact that there are days he doesn’t have to remember it all. Doesn’t have to live with the memories of horrors, and memories of Martin, and missing him with a pain as if his very heart has been torn from his chest.

He keeps the letter, keeps those last words, close to his heart. They are Martin’s. They’re all he has left. 

They are all Martin left him with.

/

He had gone beyond the perimeter of the camera exactly once. He had to, had to See, and had to know if it was true.

It was all true.

The sky overhead was still filled with eyes, but they no longer felt like his own. They no longer felt like a twisted version of his own sight. A few of the eyes twisted in his direction, their interest piqued. At the bottom of the hill the endless stretch of ocean-dark water still loomed, a moat to the Spider’s castle– the bars to his prison.

As the knowledge of what had happened inside the safe perimeter started to fade from his mind, it was not replaced by the haunting, familiar feeling of Knowing. There was Seeing, still. He had become too deeply intertwined with the Eye to simply stop Seeing. But the Knowing, that hated near-omniscience, was gone.

Like Martin’s letter had said. Like Martin hoped, and wished, and perhaps even fought for.

So Jon went back inside. He’d promised to, after all.

/

In his hands, on the pillow beside his own, in the pocket over his heart, that is where the letter rests. Jon always keeps it near, close and safe; a reminder. A memory of all he had, of what he has lost.

Jon doesn’t know what happens to it on bad days, whether he simply carries it around in a pocket, or leaves it where he finds it. He imagines he would be surprised to see a note beside himself on the bed, even if he should not remember it’s writer, or its contents and context.

Even so, the letter is always waiting for him on good days, wanting to be read.

Jon unfolds it again. He knows what it will read. He's read the letter today already. That doesn’t stop him from reading it again now, after his tears had dried on his cheeks.

* * *

My dear Jon,

I’m sorry. I know, I know, you’ve said I apologise too much, but I’m sure we can both agree that this time I get to say it. This time I really am so, so sorry.

I do not have much time to write, so you may have to ask Annabelle for details (and I’m sorry for that too, I know you’ll hate that), but please know that she will tell you the truth, at least in this matter. I’ve asked her to, and she has agreed. You can trust the Web once it has given its word, Jon. And if that’s not enough, then please take my word for it.

I want to apologize for deceiving you in this.But I had to. Because let’s face it: there was no way you would have let me do this if you’d known. I’ll explain what I’m going to do–what I will have done, hopefully, by the time you read this. I will be brief, because there are more important things that I want to say to you– that I wish I could say to you in real life. I’m going to do what I told you not to do. And for that I am sorry too. I spoke with Annabelle and she knows, and agrees, that there is no way to fix this mess of a world that we are stuck in. So I’m going to make it at the very least less bad – or bad for as few people as I possibly can. 

I am going to kill Elias.

And God, you’ve no idea how good it feels to write those words! Melanie has promised to help me as far as she can, and she and Georgie will keep as many people safe as they can. Both from the Fears, and from me– from what I may become. We may not all be Archivists, but all of us worked in the Archives once. It’ll be enough. It has to be.

But screw all of that. That’s not why I’m writing this. I am writing this to tell you to take care of yourself. If what I’m about to do has the intended effect then the world, and your connection to those stupid eyes will change. And you said it yourself–I have seen it myself– you can no longer survive without it.

So here, finally, is the reason why I write this. I want to ask you– no, I want to tell you to not. Leave. Hilltop Road. Promise me, please, that you will stay there and stay safe. Don’t try to do anything stupid and heroic. If this works–and also if this does not work, actually–I will be beyond saving. But if this works I can save you. I want you to be safe. Please, promise me that.

[Here, nearing the bottom of the page, the paper is wrinkled, dried funny, as though tears once stained it. Jon doesn’t know if the tears are his own, or Martin’s. At this point it might well be both.]  
  


But I trust you, I have to trust you. I’ve trusted you for a long time, and you’ve never lied to me. So I will trust you now. I will trust in a promise you have not yet made, and believe that you will make it.

Jon… I thought I would have more time, would have more space here in this letter as well as in life, to say all of the things I want to say, to tell you all that I feel. There is so little time, so little space. But please believe me when I say that all the time in the world would feel like not enough time to spend with you.

Lastly–I should really have started with this, I don’t know why I didn’t— lastly, and most importantly, please know, please remember I love you.

Please, remember me.

Your Martin

* * *

There are good days, when Jon remembers.

On days like these he thinks that the good days might actually be the worst, and the most painful. The memory hurts.

The memories of arguing with Martin, and leaving him behind, and –and never being able to say goodbye properly. They hurt more than Jon has words to express.

Jon hates these ‘good’ days; he hates the way they break his heart again and again with memories, and with regrets.

And he would not give them up, not for all the world.

He will remember. He promised Martin to, after all.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Let me offer you some soft, comfort-focused [hurt/comfort fics](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Silvertmahcweek) in return for this sad, sad story
> 
> Please leave a comment and let me know what you think, I love hearing from you!


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